The aim of the present work is to present new paleontological evidence that depicts the clade Raninoida well established in the Neotropics during Cretaceous times, as represented by the oldest, or some of the oldest members of its earliest families. I describe raninoid and raninoidid–like taxa including Archaeochimaeridae n. fam., and Archaeochimaera macrophthalma n. gen. n. sp., from the upper Cenomanian (~95 Ma.) of Boyacá, Planocarcinus n. gen., Planocarcinus olssoni (Rathbun, 1937) n. comb., and Notopocorystes kerri n. sp., from the upper Aptian (~115 Ma.) of Santander. These newly described taxa, plus the occurrence of Cenomanocarcinus vanstraeleni Stenzel, 1945, in the upper Albian of Boyacá (Vega et al., 2010), and Araripecarcinus ferreirai Martins–Neto, 1987, in the lower Albian of Brazil (Luque et al., in progress), represent the oldest records of, at least, four out of seven raninoidid families known to date. The new family Archaeochimaeridae, stands as the sister taxon to Raninidae + Symethidae clade. However, its unique combination of primitive, advanced, and homoplasic traits is matchless within Raninoida, and in fact, with the remaining podotreme sections. While Cretaceous raninoid taxa from higher latitudes are well known, records from the tropical South America are scarce and sparse, resulting in considerable biases when attempting to address major biogeographic and phylogenetic questions. Based on taxonomic, paleobiogeographic and cladistic information, some reconsideration of the early spatio–temporal distributions of frog crabs are proposed, with the aim of contributing to a broader understanding of the diversity, phylogeny, and evolution of early brachyuran crabs throughout time.